


Sunbursts

by iam93percentstardust



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Professors, Domestic Bliss, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:53:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27858626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iam93percentstardust/pseuds/iam93percentstardust
Summary: The lights are off in the house, the temperature turned down to its regular setting when the inhabitants are sleeping, and he knows that his boyfriends must be taking a nap for the afternoon. Bucky doesn’t blame them; he’s been dead on his feet since he got up this morning.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 20
Kudos: 155





	1. Come to Bed

**Author's Note:**

> this is just a set of quick, non-sequential but related fics set in the same universe. there's no plot here

Bucky lets himself into the house, sighing tiredly. He doesn’t know why he volunteered to teach the summer courses this year. He’s salaried so it’s not like the university will pay him any less and all that he’s accomplished so far is feeling jealous that Steve and Tony get to stay home all day since they only teach during the regular school year. He loves the summer classes usually, loves the more intimate class sizes and the enthusiasm of the students in his senior-level courses. This semester though, he’d gotten passed off to the freshman-level Intro to Chemistry course, which means that the students are resentful they have to take the class during the summer semester when they could be at home and partying.

The lights are off in the house, the temperature turned down to its regular setting when the inhabitants are sleeping, and he knows that his boyfriends must be taking a nap for the afternoon. He doesn’t blame them; he’s been dead on his feet since he got up this morning.

He drops his messenger bag off in the kitchen, the latest round of quizzes spilling out the top and across the counter. Bucky hesitates, wondering if he should pick those up now or wait for Steve to get huffy about the mess. He wouldn’t normally wait but honestly, a nap sounds absolutely amazing and he doesn’t want to miss it.

The decision is made for him when he hears the padding of light footsteps across the hardwood floor Tony had installed last summer. He turns just in time to see a sleepy Tony appear in the doorway, rubbing his eyes tiredly. Tony isn’t wearing a shirt, just a pair of what looks like Steve’s sweatpants slung low across his hips. The hems are dragging on the floor, the waistband all but falling off his hips and revealing a strip of what looks like blue silk.

“Hey, babe,” Tony murmurs. “When did you get in?”

“Just now,” Bucky replies, keeping his voice as low as Tony’s. “Stevie asleep?”

Tony nods, swaying on his feet. Bucky is across the kitchen in seconds, catching his boyfriend up in his arms. Tony sort of wraps his legs around Bucky’s waist but mostly, he’s just deadweight. “We wanted a nap but I wanted to stay up for you.”

Bucky kisses his cheek. “That’s sweet of you, doll.”

“I know.”

He chuckles, setting off for the bedroom. “You mind if I lay down with you?”

“Wouldn’t have waited up for you otherwise.”

“Of course. What was I thinking?”

They both go quiet as they enter the dark room. It smells like Tony did the laundry earlier today, all clean and fresh, and the fan is going, wafting a gentle breeze through the room. He sets Tony down on the bed, who promptly crawls up to where Steve is sprawled out on his back, squirms under the blankets, and curls into his side. Almost immediately, Steve rolls onto his side, arm wrapping around Tony’s waist. Bucky smiles at the sight of them and heads into the bathroom.

He waits until the door is closed before turning on the lights and turning on the water in the shower. While he waits, he strips out of his clothes and throws them in the empty laundry basket. He takes the world’s shortest shower, just enough to get the smell of acetone off of him—he had done a demo during his classes today—and within five minutes, he’s wandering back into the bedroom, wearing just a pair of his boxers.

Tony is fast asleep but Steve is just barely starting to blink awake. Bucky goes to his side of the bed first to kiss his forehead and murmur, “Go back to sleep, baby.” Steve nods drowsily, letting his eyes droop closed again. Bucky walks back around to his side of the bed, on the other side of Tony, and slides under the sheets, cool against his skin. In his sleep, Tony wiggles back against him and Bucky moves closer so that he and Steve have their smaller boyfriend tucked between them. He rests his hand on Tony’s hip, interlacing his fingers with Steve’s, and smiles as he drifts off.


	2. Fireflies

“You know,” Tony says as he comes out to join Bucky on the porch, “when I was growing up, my mom used to tell me that fireflies were the first sign of summer.”

Bucky scoots over so that Tony can join him on the porch swing, which he does, easily enough. He wraps his arm around Tony, pulling him in close. Tony snuggles against his side. They watch the fireflies twinkling in the yard for a few minutes in silence as the sun goes down. Soon, they’ll need to go back in—Tony is practically catnip for mosquitos—but they’ve got a couple minutes before it gets too bad.

“Thought you grew up in New York,” he says eventually. “Same as us.”

“Yeah, and?”

“Aren’t a whole lot of fireflies in New York.”

“There are the ones in that state park,” Tony argues but he doesn’t sound too heated, just tired, and Bucky wonders what he was up to today since he wasn’t on campus. “Anyway, Mom was from Georgia.”

“I didn’t know that,” Bucky says, surprised.

Tony shrugs and doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t really like to talk about his parents and Bucky doesn’t blame him. He only met the Starks once before the car crash but it had made a pretty lasting impression of a lonely and miserable childhood. It really isn’t any wonder that Tony turned out as insecure as he did.

“Any idea what Steve is cooking tonight?” he asks, glancing through the kitchen window. Inside, he can see Steve adding some spice to a casserole dish, probably one of their fancy flavored salts that come in the round little tins that they picked up the last time they were at the farmers market.

“Chicken, bacon, broccoli, and cheese casserole,” Tony says.

“Sounds dangerous.”

“I think he got the recipe from Mrs. Byers down the street.”

“The one who puts practically a pound of butter in everything?”

“That’s the one.”

Bucky winces. Definitely dangerous. They only recently moved into this house a couple months ago after spending their first few years in Austin in a condo only a few blocks away from campus and he’s still getting to know the neighbors. Life in Texas is definitely very different than life in New York but UT had been the only university that had job offerings for all three of them.

The door opens again and Steve steps out onto the porch, stretching. “Hey, you two,” he says softly. He bends down and kisses Bucky’s mouth, ruffles Tony’s hair, and then sits on Bucky’s other side, stretching an arm out behind him. His arm is long enough that his fingers brush against Tony’s shoulder but that doesn’t stop Tony from crowding Bucky over so that he’s practically pressed up against Steve’s side and Steve can reach his shoulder to massage it.

Steve chuckles, “You know if you want a massage, you can come sit in my lap.”

Immediately, Tony is up, moving, and settling back right in front of Steve.

“Betrayed,” Bucky says mournfully. “Unloved. Whatever shall I do?”

“Stop being so dramatic,” Tony retorts.

Both Bucky and Steve burst out into laughter. Tony is the biggest drama queen either of them has ever met, not that they would change that for the world. They love him like that. Tony pouts long enough that Bucky leans over and kisses the pout away, leaving a purring Tony in its place.

“You two been watching the fireflies?” Steve asks as they start to fall into silence.

“Mmhmm,” Tony hums. He groans when Steve’s clever fingers work out a knot in his left shoulder.

“You know, Ma used to take me to see the ones in Allegany State Park every year.”

“That’s the one!” Tony exclaims triumphantly.

Steve raises an eyebrow. “Did I miss something while I was inside?”

“You missed lots of things,” Bucky says.

“Uh-huh,” Steve says dubiously. Bucky winks at Tony, who giggles into his hand.

They subside into silence again, watching the fireflies blink on and off as dusk gathers around them. The first of the mosquitos are starting to come out and they’ll need to go inside if they want to avoid Tony’s whining about his itchiness for three days. For now though, it’s peaceful and quiet and they’re not thinking about anything except how pretty the fireflies are.


	3. Raindrops on Our Window

It’s raining when Bucky wakes up for the second time that morning. He had woken up earlier, to darkness and Steve’s drugging kisses and Tony’s tight heat sliding down on him, but they had all fallen back asleep soon afterward, too blissed, sated, and exhausted to stay awake when it was a Saturday and they had nowhere to be. It’s hours later now, he thinks, well past breakfast but the light filtering through the windows is soft and grey and he can hear rain spattering against the window.

Tony is still curled up against him, always one to sleep later than either of his boyfriends, but Steve isn’t in the bed with them. Bucky can hear his pencil scratching over paper though and when he raises his head—not much, not with Tony’s own head resting on his chest—he sees Steve in the armchair by the window with his sketchpad in hand.

If they’d still been living in their condo near campus, Bucky would have guessed that Steve was sketching the two of them. He and Tony are, after all, his favorite subjects. But their new home comes with a lovely view of a large pond complete with a family of ducks and four new ducklings that Steve loves drawing so for all Bucky knows, that’s what has captured Steve’s attention on this rainy summer morning.

“Whatcha drawin’ there, Stevie?” he asks, voice low enough that he doesn’t wake Tony.

Steve glances toward them, not really jumping but there’s still a startled light in his eyes. Well, that mostly answers Bucky’s question. If Steve had been drawing his two boyfriends, he doubts he would have been as surprised by Bucky waking up. Sure enough, Steve says, “The rain on the window.”

Bucky hums a question.

“I just like how it looks,” Steve replies to his unspoken question. “It feels different than New York rain.”

That’s for sure. Texas definitely gets a lot less rain than New York did and it _does_ feel different than he would have expected when they moved here. Rain should be rain, right? But—and maybe it’s because of the drought—the rain in Texas seems to come down harder, even when it’s a gentle drizzle like this. Or maybe there was just so much noise in New York that he couldn’t hear the rain even when it was storming.

“How long has it been going on?” he asks. Against his chest, Tony stirs, brow creasing grumpily. Bucky reaches down to card his fingers through Tony’s hair and, after a moment, he settles back down with nothing more than a quiet grumble.

“’bout an hour,” Steve says, watching the two of them now. He flips over to the next page in his sketchbook and begins drawing again, gaze darting between the page and Bucky and Tony.

“You’ve been awake that long?” he asks, dismayed. “You’ve been _out of bed_ that long?”

Steve shakes his head. “Wasn’t really aware for most of it. I only got up twenty minutes or so ago.”

“Twenty minutes is still too long, Stevie.” He extends a hand toward him, beckoning him back to the sleep-warm bed, the soft pillows, and of course, the two of them. “Come back to bed.”

Steve looks torn, too torn, considering Bucky is asking him to come back to bed with him and Tony, the two people that Steve has chosen to spend the rest of his life with and therefore should be a much bigger draw than the rain outside. Eventually, he shakes his head again, eliciting a sigh from Bucky, and holds up his notebook apologetically. “I want to get this down first.”

Bucky sighs again—the problem with dating an artist, _really_ —but obligingly shifts into a better position for the lighting. He moves Tony with him, who lets out another low grumble but doesn’t twitch awake so he counts it as a win.

“Perfect, Buck,” Steve murmurs, eyeing the two of them. His pencil is positively flying over the page now, trying to capture the scene as quickly as he can. Bucky can understand _that_ sentiment at least; it’s not easy to get Tony soft and pliant like this. So often, he’s a blur of motion and energy, bouncing from idea to idea. He’s even restless when he sleeps, like his brain is convinced that there’s more he could be doing if only his body didn’t require sleep every night (by the way Tony talks, Bucky sometimes thinks that before he had Steve and Bucky, he only let himself sleep every couple of nights but now he has two boyfriends cajoling him toward bed every night and he goes with only the littlest of complaints). Getting him like this, quiet and still, is a rare treat and he can understand Steve wanting to capture it on paper.

He settles his head back against the pillows and closes his eyes, letting the rain on the windows soothe him into a haze as he waits for Steve to finish his picture and join him. With Tony in his arms and Steve just across the room and his mind being lulled back into sleep, he thinks he could wait forever.


	4. Onward

It’s early enough that the sun hasn’t even risen yet. Tony is already curled up in the front seat fast asleep as Bucky finishes loading the last of the suitcases into the car and Steve programs addresses into the GPS. They have four hours of driving ahead of them, at least an hour more if they can’t get on the road in time to beat the Austin traffic and since none of them like dealing with the traffic, they’d all rather leave early.

Doesn’t mean that any of them want to be up this early, except for maybe Stevie, who planned this whole trip as prep work for his Honors class this fall semester: Ghoulies and Ghosties: The Supernatural in Texas. Bucky had made fun of the class’s name right up until Steve had primly informed him that his class was completely full with a waiting list nearly fifty names long. _Bucky_ certainly doesn’t have that kind of attendance. His class on the use of analytical techniques in environmental chemistry is only half-full. Tony hasn’t told either of them how many students he has but Bucky has sat in on a couple of his classes before. They’re always packed pretty full.

“Any thoughts on where we’re going first?” he asks Steve with a yawn. He shoves the last suitcase into the trunk and closes it, hoping that it isn’t too full to latch properly. Tony isn’t quite a full-tilt diva but he’s pretty close and he packs a _lot_ of clothes. Fortunately, the trunk does close and he goes around the car to climb in the backseat since Tony has claimed the front one (not that Bucky knows why, he definitely has longer legs than Tony).

“I was thinking the Ashton Villa,” Steve says and passes him his phone so Bucky can take a look at their website. “Their ghost is mostly friendly.”

“This says she’s eccentric.”

“That’s code for friendly. You can’t just say they’re friendly, no one will come visit.”

“Good,” Bucky grumbles. “No one should be visiting anyway. There’s a damn ghost on the loose.”

Steve gives him an amused look and takes the phone back, fixing it to the dashboard so he can glance at the map. Bucky takes one look at the setup and leans into the front seat so he can snatch the phone back.

“It’s hands-off,” Steve protests.

He retorts, “Still not safe.”

He’s half-expecting Steve to protest but all Steve says is, “Make sure whatever music you pick doesn’t wake Tony up. He had nightmares last night.”

Bucky winces sympathetically. Tony has had nightmares for as long as they’ve known him. Bucky is a heavy sleeper but he knows that the nightmares are bad from the few times he’s been awake for them. Steve usually ends up having to wake Tony up to get him to calm down so he doesn’t accidentally hurt himself. Tony has never told them what his nightmares are about but they both know enough about his childhood to be able to guess. Howard Stark hadn’t been the kindest of fathers, to put it nicely.

He selects one of Steve’s piano playlists on Spotify, one of the ones that he listens to when he’s grading papers cause it helps him calm down when he has a particularly bad one so Bucky figures it’ll be helpful if there’s any traffic on the interstate. This particular one is notorious for making Tony drop off to sleep if he’s sitting down nearby. Hopefully, it’ll help him stay asleep.

“What about you?” he asks Steve as they pull out of the driveway. “Are you safe to drive or do you need a nap as well?”

“Maybe in a couple hours,” Steve admits, “but you in traffic isn’t something I want to subject any of us to this early in the morning.”

Bucky very maturely sticks out his tongue even though he knows Steve has a point. His road rage isn’t as bad as _some_ people’s (cough—Tony—cough) but it can still be pretty awful during the early morning and evening rush hours and he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if he woke Tony up with his yelling.

“Which way?” Steve prompts him as they leave their subdivision.

He checks the map. “Right,” he says and Steve turns, driving off into the early morning light.


End file.
